


Token for Your Thoughts?

by Ellerigby13



Series: Harlequin Prompts 2020 [3]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Arcades, Awesome Carol Danvers, Bisexual Brunnhilde | Valkyrie (Marvel), Canon Compliant, F/F, First Dates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22546615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: Carol agonizes over what flowers to get, what to wear, where to go on her first date with Valkyrie, while Val's just happy to be going out at all.  AKA: Carol Danvers is a useless lesbian and we love her for it.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Carol Danvers
Series: Harlequin Prompts 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619725
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43
Collections: MHEA Harlequin Hoopla Prompt Challenge 2020





	Token for Your Thoughts?

Carol Danvers is capable of a good many things: boxing, shooting fire out of her hands, flying - in a fighter jet, in a spaceship, and on her own two feet - but figuring out what kind of flowers to bring to a first date with the only woman on base who could turn her into an almost literal pile of goo just by looking at her? That feels damn near impossible.

“You’ve spent time with her, do you know what kind she likes?” she asks one day, making Banner almost jump out of his skin. He turns away from his workstation in the lab to give her an incredulous look before returning to whatever contraption sits on the bench in front of him.

“We were kind of busy trying to get off an alien planet. None of us ever bothered to ask about her floral preferences.”

“ _ Bruce _ .”

He sighs dramatically, running a hand across his forehead. “She wears a lot of white, a lot of blue, a lot of gold. Might be a good place to start.”

Finding his advice extraordinarily unhelpful, Carol picks ups every variety of flowers in those three colors that she can find in the nearest supermarket, squishes them together in a bouquet bag that’s far too small, and goes home to agonize over her closet about a hundred times.

Naturally, nothing fits right, or looks right, or goes together well enough for the stupidly beautiful woman she’s about to spend a stupidly large amount of money taking out at a restaurant she has no idea how to sit in or order from.

When she picks Val up from the dorm on the other side of base, Val looks impossibly and effortlessly beautiful. In a damn flannel and dark skinny jeans, which was the first thing Carol had tried on and deemed unworthy.

“You look terrific,” Val says first, pulling Carol close to kiss each cheek. Her gaze flickers down to the flowers Carol’s holding dumbly at her side, and the smile that lights her face sends electricity to the deepest part of Carol’s stomach. “Carol, you shouldn’t have.”

“But I did.” She tries to smile, but it feels foolish to try and be even a tenth as radiant as the woman in front of her. “You are...beautiful. And I have to be totally honest - I don’t know that I’m up for the whole fancy dinner, red wine and chocolate, feeding each other expensive fish thing. But...I still want to take you somewhere, somewhere fun for our first date - ” Val puts her hand over Carol’s and squeezes lightly.

“What do you have in mind?”

They end up at a tiny arcade tucked into the back of a shopping center in upstate New York, one where the pinball machines are getting rickety and the woman who runs the place looks like she’s been there since the beginning of time. They each buy an afternoon’s worth of tokens and a couple of root beers from her and post up by the Time Crisis 3 machine.

“You’ve never been to an arcade before?” Carol asks, unable to help herself from adoring the way that Val’s lips pucker around her straw. If she could, she’d hold her hand forever.

“You’ve been honest with me, I’ll be perfectly honest with you...I have never been on a proper date. Ever.”

She might be staring, but at this point does it really matter? “You - you’ve never been on a date?”

Valkyrie lifts her chin over her root beer, a coy smile playing across her lips. “We don’t really do ‘dating’ on Asgard. Courtship, yes, but usually it’s all in plain view of everyone you know. No private outings to places where you can shoot things without consequence.”

“No private outings to preposterously expensive dinner places where everyone sits and judges each other, even though they’re pretending they’re not?”

“Is that what you had planned for this evening?” She’s full-on grinning now, sliding a hand across the tabletop to fiddle with Carol’s bracelet. “A stuffy, judgmental dinner?”

“I thought that was how it was supposed to be done,” Carol shrugs, and takes the opportunity to slide her own hand into Val’s, experimenting with lacing their fingers between each other’s. “I haven’t exactly been on many dates myself.”

“No? But you have been on  _ some _ ?”

She tilts her head noncommittally. “A handful. Nothin’ to write home about.”

“Tell me about  _ your _ first date. Was it awful, stuffy, judgmental?”

A deep belly laugh erupts in Carol’s stomach. “No, no, not stuffy or judgmental. My best friend in middle school asked me to the high school football game with me. He tried to kiss me when we were on the stairs on the way up the bleachers, and I ducked because I’d never kissed anyone before, and he ended up falling down them.”

Valkyrie slaps her hand against her mouth, her beautiful dark eyes wide.

“No, no, he just fell to the next platform - skinned his knees and bruised his ego a little bit, but he was okay.”

“That sounds terrible,” Val begins to giggle, her cheeks growing pink. “Did you ever go on another date with him?”

“Nope. I don’t think we ever really talked again after that.”

“That’s sad,” Val muses, and finishes her rootbeer in one long gulp. “Come shoot stuff with me?”

Carol finishes the rest of her drink, too, and takes Val’s hand when she pulls her toward Time Crisis. Val grasps the concept of the pedal and the gun pretty quickly, surprising no one, and her aim, surprising no one, never misses its mark. Carol falters a few times to let her stomach swoop at Val’s focused face.

“You know,” Val starts, eyes still locked on the screen, “I thought that when Thor brought us here, it might mean...I don’t know, that he might do something like this with me. Not that I’m disappointed.” She glances at Carol, and lowers her plastic gun. “I couldn’t be. Now that I’m here...there’s nobody else I’d rather go on shooting dates with.”

“Fuck.” Across the way, their characters go bloody and the screen tinged with red. Carol feels her hands start to shake, and she wonders if this is always what it’s like, when somebody likes you this much. When you like somebody this much. “There’s nobody else  _ I’d _ rather go on shooting dates with.”

Val sticks her gun into its holder, and it stops Carol’s heart for a second when she sticks her fingers through Carol’s beltloops. She leans forward, but before her lips can meet Carol’s, she narrows her eyes and cranes her neck to glance over each of their shoulders.

Carol grins. “What’re you doing?”

“Making sure there are no stairs nearby. I’d hate to fall down any if you ducked out of kissing me.”

She laughs, pressing her hand to her belly, and then lets it drift to the back of Val’s neck, her fingers dancing over the collar. “I won’t. Scout’s honor.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Val says, and closes the distance.


End file.
